You Can Now Follow Your Bag on Delta in Real Time, Like FedEx

We’ve been asking for this for a long time now, but the wait (at least for Delta passengers) is finally over. You can now follow your checked bag on Delta just like you follow a package on FedEx. And that’s only a part of what the airline is doing to make things move more smoothly. This is good stuff.

I was excited about this, so I went to the Twitterverse to find people who had checked a bag on Delta so I could see some real-time results. I couldn’t have asked for a better marriage of technology than what resulted. I received a response from a Twitter follower who was using internet on his Delta flight and was worried since he had checked his bag for the first time in two years. He had the bag tag number, and I sent him the link to the bag tracking page at Delta.com. The results showed this:

So here he was, sitting a few miles above the Southwest US in this airplane, and he was able to check and see that his bag had been scanned planeside as it was boarded on to his aircraft. Friggin’ beautiful, isn’t it?

But what happens if the bag gets lost? I had another Twitter follower respond that his bag had been missing for days. Here’s what Delta showed:

That’s not pretty. It looks like his bag was scanned on the airplane, but then it was sent back to the sort area and now it’s disappeared. If it’s found, it will be scanned and that will show up here. He’ll also be able to see when it gets on another flight to his destination. Let’s all just hope that they find it one of these days.

That’s not all Delta is doing here. The airline is taking this one step further as well. I’m told that you can sign up for alerts to be sent directly to you in regards to bag status. I haven’t found where to sign up for this or how it works, but it’s on its way. I’m sure we’ll hear more soon.

[Got an update from Delta on 4/21 @ 930a: SkyMiles members can login to delta.com and then select ‘profile’ from the menu options. From there, they can select ‘Contact Me’ and subscribe to our ‘Last-minute Updates’ feature which provides our Medallion customers with alerts on their upgrade status and now has the ability to alert any SkyMiles member about the status of their checked baggage.]

In addition, Delta has brought the claim form into the 21st century. Until recently, once you reported your bag lost, you had to fill out a paper claim form for reimbursement. But now, you can do it online. Finally.

So, Delta is making a lot of strides here in terms of making the baggage process more transparent for customers. Great stuff. We need to see more like this.